


the stars that shine like ghosts

by mythbusterposey



Category: Star Trek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 07:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2059692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>his bones were all he had, once. now he has nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stars that shine like ghosts

Leonard feels strange, maybe something's catching. When Jim calls him "Bones", it's different and not the same as when they were in the Academy together. He made the mistake once of looking up when he said it recently, and regretted seeing the look of dismayed frustration, sadness on that familiar face.

 

But everything is starting to become unfamiliar. He can't remember where his tools are, where certain hypos are in the cabinets, how things work. He's pretty sure he hasn't slept in 72 hours or so, but whenever he tries to relax he starts hallucinating, seeing bright flits of gold and great blobs of red and sharp points of blue fill his head. Damn lights. What would it take to get something other than white and primary colors on this ship?

 

He misses the greens of the fields of home, the orangey warm color of peaches in the summer, the stunning purple sky, outlining the prettiest sunsets over the hills. Damn. Maybe he should've taken some leave.

 

Spock even stops by sometimes, just to inquire about the status of the sickbay, if everything is in working order, is there anything he needs. He all but throws a hypospray at his pointy little ears and tells him to kindly fuck off,  _sir_.

 

Sulu comes in only once or twice a week, but he says nothing, watches Leonard like he's watching a horror movie with a pretty girl—terrified, but thinly veiled under a tough-guy exterior. They don't talk.

 

Uhura has not visited.

 

But Jim seems to come down every two hours to stand broodingly in the corner, his gold uniform seemingly sharper than the gold-blue- _red_  headache Leonard has been nursing for the last...six hours or so. If he has to hear "How're you doing, Bones?" In that soft voice _that does not belong to Jim Kirk_  one more time, he's going to be accused of mutiny for rendering his captain incapacitated.

 

Luckily Leonard is the master at ignoring James Kirk and all of his weirdness. Just like at the Academy. Except this time, it's heavier.

 

Everything feels heavier. His eyelids, for fucks sake, his hands and arms and head. But when he sits in a chair or lays out on a couch to rest his eyes for a bit, he wakes up gasping, clutching at his chest and feeling hollow, like not even his bones are there.

 

The gold starts fading from his hallucinations, and red takes it's place, even the blue seems a little paler. The white of the ship seems darker. It reminds Leonard of when they were last at Battlestations, and everything was dark and red and scary. The headache gets worse the more he tries to remember that, so he doesn't try to.

 

Jim is back, looking at him with that unbelievable  _concern_  again. Bones would yell at him if his voice weren't so ragged and his hands weren't moving so slow. He has to tell Christine what to do with a patient even though she knows exactly what to do anyway. She's brilliant, though he'll never admit it to her face.

 

He starts to hear things around the 90th hour awake. Just his name, whispered in his ear. It makes his heart race at the familiarity. Finally, something he can remember. But...how does he know it? The voice just keeps sighing into his ear, sometimes loud and sharp when he has something sharp in his hands or when he downs his umpteenth cup of coffee and starts chewing on espresso beans. Sure beats the headache that's getting worse and turning the edges of his eyesight red, bleeding into frame.

 

Jim and Spock come at the same time, double teaming him, it seems, until Sulu shows up too, with a tight look on his face. He doesn't look them in the eye at all as he goes about his work, though he refuses to even go near BioBed 2. Strange.

 

He starts panicking as he reaches his 100th hour awake. He's hit with that scraping, breathless, gut-wrenching feeling again, his eyes are open now, though.

 

Then Scotty comes in and joins. Leonard feels something coming on. Maybe he's sicker than he thought. He jabs his neck with a low dosage of adrenaline and his hands don't even shake that much. He has to use the voice prompter for his paperwork though.

 

His little entourage goes unnoticed by the other doctors. They all just watch him. Sometimes one of them nods off watching him work mindlessly, but they stay.

 

It's near his 115th hour that Uhura shows up, and she's holding something in her hands. Her eyes are red and puffy. Leonard finds his legs pulling him to her. She looks up at him with new tears in her eyes. They look like they hurt. She hands him the soft bundle of fabric. He looks down at it.

 

It's so small in his hands that he can hardly remember what fit in it. It's obviously been through an attempt of two to be cleaned, but to no avail. The soft gold is broken suddenly by the harsh, starchy texture of dried blood, still somehow a stark red against it. The only thing that would complete it would be—

 

Those two blue eyes.

 

He doesn't realize he's not breathing until he's gasping for air and everything is getting blurry around the edges again. There are warm, strong hands on his shoulders as he sinks to the floor, burying his face in the red and the gold and missing the blue. He's sobbing in anguish, words he can't control slipping out in a stunned stupor. "I couldn't save him..." Seems to be the phrase of the night.

 

_He was given such little time from when they came off the transport pad. There was a trail of red leading from it (probably into space itself, he mused) to the medbay that no one bothered to clean up, really._

_The wound was really bad, and only got worse from the fact that there was still blood going to it. Bones, for the first time since his first year as a doctor, wished, panickedly, for more time. His hands shake as he tries to close the wound up and apply pressure, but there's already so much blood, up to his elbows, that he can't cover one thing up without another breaking free._

_By then the medbay has gone quiet, and damnit, is he the only doctor around here?!_

  
_But then there are cold little fingers on his cheek, slick with blood and shaking with exhaustion, turning his face to his right. Those beautiful points of blue are more the color of an overcast sky, if that's even possible. The blood has been sucked from his face, which should make his eyes stand out. There are so many things that_ should _be going on right now._  


_"L-Leonard...iz okay, iz okay..."_

_"No, damnit, I can save you! Just please hold on for me!"_

_"Iz okay...I luff you. Iz okay..."_

_And that hand slid down his face, and came to rest over his heart, completely on accident, the way Jim's hand had slid down the wall when he...when he..._

Leonard fears the dark as much as the stark light that drew the color from Pavel.

**Author's Note:**

> *compulsively apologizes*  
> this is my first Star Trek fic sorry sorry sorry


End file.
